


until I wrap myself inside your arms I cannot rest

by Del (goddessdel)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode Fix-It: s04e08 Silence in the Library, Existential Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Memory Loss, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15983549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessdel/pseuds/Del
Summary: It feels like she's drowning. Everything is dark and there's a loud whooshing and a weight is compressing her chest as though she's under water. Maybe she's dying.





	until I wrap myself inside your arms I cannot rest

**Author's Note:**

> Written: 1/11/18-8/26/18
> 
> Originally started as I was thinking about RSSS gift fics for [hegaveallhecouldgiveher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegaveallhecouldgiveher) before I realized that 1) it was probably going to be *too* angsty for RSSS and 2) it wasn't exactly going to make a T rating. But thanks for the angst inspiration, regardless!
> 
> Thanks to Bree and Beverly for supporting all the angst, and to Bree for giving it a read-through. Happy birthday, Beverly! Have all the angst. Muah.
> 
> Title from "Howl" by Florence + the Machine.

It feels like she's drowning. Everything is dark and there's a loud whooshing and a weight is compressing her chest as though she's under water. Maybe she's dying.

"River? River! Come on, River. Breathe." There's a frantic voice next to her ear, harsh and urgent and so, so familiar. "Just breathe."

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to remember the mechanics of that. Breathing. She coughs and sputters a few times before she gets the hang of it. Inhale. _Exhale._ Repeat.

The weight on her chest slowly starts to recede, her thoughts clouded and hazy like the sigh of relief she can feel tickling her skin. "That's it. Just breathe."

Skin. She has skin. And lungs. Her senses are slowly orienting themselves, as though she's just woken up or fallen asleep - actions she barely remembers even in her dreams. She still can't see and it's still too loud - machines and whirring and _da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da_ pounding in her ears.

"Can you open your eyes for me, River?"

Oh. That's right. She has to actually open her eyes. The mechanism of that comes quicker than breathing; she blinks up and the darkness recedes, leaving in its place a blinding splash of light and color, blurred and diffuse around the edges. She flinches instinctively away.

"Shh, shh. I'm here, River. I'm right here. You're safe."

It's easier when she focuses on that low, gruff voice whispering in her ear. Easier to tune out the cacophony of sound, easier to blink the bright haze of light into actual shapes resolving before her eyes.

The Doctor's face slowly comes into focus, looming anxiously over her, haggard and... frightened. He looks frightened.

When her eyes focus on him, his face splits into a relieved, elated grin, one of his hands lifting to sweep nervously through his cloud of grey curls before returning to rest gently over her skin.

She can feel his hands on her now, long Time Lord fingers dancing up and down her arms as though he's trying to warm her.

Is she cold? She can't tell. She can't even remember what cold is supposed to feel like anymore.

He's still grinning at her, his eyes wet. "Hello, sweetie." His hands brush her hair out of her face before cupping her cheeks.

One of her hearts skips a beat at the words and she finally recognizes the pounding in her head as her own heartbeats. Hearts. She has two of those, she remembers.

The Doctor's thumbs gently wipe wetness from her cheeks. His hands are piecing her back together with each brush of his skin against hers.

"That's... my... line..." it seems to take an interminable effort to get the words out, to remember the sound and shape of them in her mouth.

Her voice is soft and scratchy and doesn't sound like her at all, but the Doctor laughs anyway, giddy, and he can't keep away his grin even as he shushes her with hurried kisses to her cheeks and nose and forehead.

"Just borrowing it, dear. Had to be... certain..." His hands flit over her, grounding her and bringing her into herself at the same time. "How are you feeling?"

Everything still feels weighted and hazy, her thoughts sluggish and disorientated. Her skin feels less raw to the touch, her eyes and ears adjusting to her surroundings, to the mechanical whirring that feels like home.

Home.

She's in the TARDIS.

She's in the TARDIS and the Doctor is with her.

_You're safe._

River's eyes drift shut, lulled by the gentle whirring of the TARDIS, and she lets the fog to take her.

...

She remembers to open her eyes this time, swimming back towards consciousness as though from very, very far away.

Shapes, colors, sounds, _breathe._ She's still in the TARDIS and the Doctor is still at her side.

He leaps from his chair and rushes to her bedside when she stirs, sinking to his knees. Bedside - she's in bed.

River blinks away the wetness clouding her eyes, still struggling to settle into her heavy limbs. "What..." she has to cough and try again, "what... happened? I was - I was... just..." she can't remember.

The Doctor flinches, hiding his eyes from hers as he searches for his sonic with one hand and reaches for hers with the other. His thumb strokes her wrist, finding the _da-da-da-da_ of her pulse. "We can talk about that later, yeah? Once you're - well, later. You're here now and that's what matters."

Now. Where was she _before?_

Her memories feel disconnected and nebulous, or maybe that's time.

 _Time_.

What a funny concept.

She remembers time: the taste of it, the feel of it crackling across her skin.

She remembers it stopping.

(It's not supposed to do that, she doesn't think, except for special occasions, like their wedding.)

Time feels foreign, and yet she aches with missing it.

"Is it what matters?"

"Yes."

His reply is immediate and fierce, and her fingers curl automatically around his.

Here and now, that's what matters.

"All right."

...

The Doctor brings her water and spreads of food meant to entice her into eating. She doesn't feel hungry, but she eats to appease that haunted, worried look in his eyes. Nothing tastes quite right on her tongue, like a recording that is too loud.

Her memories still feel disjointed, like bits of computer code without the key.

It's an effort to remember to breathe.

The Doctor reminds her gently when she forgets, though there's that sorrow she can't account for.

River doesn't remember living being so hard.

"Did I die?"

There's that wince again, the one that tells her it's not later enough. Her sense of time still feels blunted and disoriented; she doesn't know if it's been days or months.

He answers her though, after a fashion. "Not... exactly."

River closes her eyes and nods, though it's an effort, as though she's forgotten that she has to actually tell her limbs to move. "So close enough then."

The Doctor sighs and she can hear his agreement in the sound.

...

Her body eventually begins to feel like her own.

It takes longer to remember why it didn't in the first place. She's died before - she didn't even change bodies this time - and she's never felt such a tenuous connection to life.

There are days she thinks the only thing keeping her from drifting away into the aether is the Doctor, his hand in hers and his dear, stubborn face, and _you're here now and that's what matters._

So she grips his hand tightly and tries to remember the motions of a smile.

...

Her memories come back to her in pieces. Disjointed and incomplete and tinged with an artificial edge that makes them slip through her fingers like dreams. Or nightmares.

_Oh._

"River!" 

Her slap is resounding. The Doctor's head twists to the side, his eyes wide, and his laugh full of unbridled glee. 

He flexes his jaw, rubbing at the red mark already flaring and fading against his skin, but his grin is wide and joyous and utterly mad.

"What was that for?"

"You _left_ me."

He sobers so quickly it's River's turn for whip lash. "Like a book on a shelf."

The words tug at a memory she can't quite place, an echo she can't catch hold of. "What?"

She barely catches the book he tosses her, plucked neatly off one of the many nearby bookshelves scattered across the current TARDIS desktop.

Her breath catches when she sees the title.

The Doctor watches her carefully, his voice low and gruff. "That's what you said... that I'd left you _like a book on a shelf_. You were wrong, River. Books aren't forgotten on shelves. They're read and cherished and _loved_."

The cover is torn and creased, the spine cracked and the pages yellowing, ink splotched and fading: _The Time Traveler's Wife_. "I don't -" _understand_... There's so much she doesn't understand anymore, her head still muffled and chaotic, certainties slipping through her fingers like water.

"I could never bear to read this one," from his coat breast pocket comes her diary, the aged blue cover so familiar that she could trace it in her dreams. "I didn't forget you, River. I _saved_ you, just for a little while."

"It wasn't a 'little while.'" Not with the way her memories flow away from her like liquid, her sense of self fluid and unstable.

Not with how hard it is to remember to breathe.

The Doctor winces but doesn't hide his face from her. His eyes are full of an unfathomable sorrow that River imagines is echoed in her own. "I know. I'm so sorry, River. It took longer than I'd imagined to save you properly."

She can still hear all the words he doesn't say: that it was his ego presuming that he could cheat death in a heartbeat, that if it took so long the answer must have come with terrible consequences, that nothing is without repercussions. She may not know herself, but she'll always know him.

River shrugs, offers him a ghost of a smile, as delicate as she can be. "Too long."

"No." His denial is immediate and too forceful, as though he's trying to will the universe to bend into the shape he desires.

Some things never change.

River lets him fold her into his arms, her ancient diary cracking between them. She runs her fingertips over the already fading red of his cheek and feels time rumbling underneath his skin, wondering if there's still time running under hers.

...

She remembers who she is in broad strokes, but it feels more like a story someone told her so many times that she convinced herself they were memories rather than lives she actually lived.

She wonders if that will ever fade and if she's still River or something else entirely.

"River?"

The Doctor's voice is painfully gentle, and River blinks back into her body; it still feels like she might float away if she's not vigilant.

"Am I?"

His gaze pierces through the skin she still isn't comfortable in, as though he knows his focus is the only thing holding her here in this body, as though he still knows her even when she doesn't know herself. "What?"

"Am I still River?"

The Doctor sighs and she knows by the tremor in his breath that she's hurt him again. Some days she feels glad of it and some days she regrets it, but most days it's hard to really feel anything at all. "You chose to be River Song, remember? Every day, you chose to be her. Just as I chose to be the Doctor. It was very Time Lord of you, dearest."

"What if I don't have a choice?"

"There's always a choice, River."

But he says her name like there isn't, just as he's always said her name, willing her into being through the power of his belief.

For him, she thinks she could be River. She could try.

But she doesn't reply and they don't speak of it again.

...

Her time in the Library must not transfer perfectly from code to memory because it always comes in fits and jumps, no rhyme or reason or time. Perhaps that's what it was like in there - and she wonders if she even exists in those gaps.

Her hybrid Time Lord mind fills in what it can, straining for coherence between forgotten moments.

A Time Lord never forgets, but River feels like she's forgotten lifetimes between the Silence and erased timelines and the Library. Perhaps she has.

She remembers the Doctor though. Her lives wrapped up around him as her only constant. Even in the Library, she knows with a surprising certainty that she re-read their adventures over and over again - in anthologies and fairy tales and her diary - burning the memories onto her soul or whatever was left of it.

She remembers haunting the Doctor too, with a sharp sort of melancholy, and he fills in the gaps for her, tripping over his words with regret piercing his voice.

"You never spoke to me."

He swallows. "No. Not until the end." He pauses and she thinks that's all he's going to say. He already made his grand declarations next to what might have been his gave, after all. "I thought I was going mad - that you were a hallucination or a dream. I didn't dare believe you might be real."

"Because it would have hurt too much?" River parrots back his words with a wry twist of her lips.

"Because I would have stayed with you. I would have just stopped... _everything_. If you were really haunting me, I could never have let go of even a piece of you. And if you weren't real, well... then I'd have chosen madness rather than let you go."

River sucks in a sharp breath, barely managing not to cough at the unexpected rush of air. "You never said."

"You never knew." He says it like he wishes it were a question but knows the hollow ring of truth.

River shrugs delicately, turning away from the fathomless pain shining in his eyes. "I know now."

How could she not, when he's standing still with her shade, just as he promised?

...

It's a long time before she feels up to leaving the TARDIS. Still too often where she feels like she's just drifting, with only the hum of the TARDIS and the Doctor's hand in hers there to ground her.

She'd forgotten how patient he could be with this face, sitting cooped up in the TARDIS with only a ghost of his wife as company.

He doesn't rush her, even though he clearly thinks getting fresh air and a spot of danger is just the thing to bring her back to life. He's probably not wrong, if it's possible to bring her back to herself at all.

River makes her way to the console, listening to the reassuring hum of the TARDIS and hoping that maybe if she actually starts living it will feel less exhausting to remember all the petty details that go along with it. "All right, where did you have in mind?"

The Doctor is by her side in an instant, his hands confident over the console and his grin brilliant. "Wherever you fancy, dear."

Her mind is still full of every book in the universe, cluttered and disoriented - it's difficult distinguishing between memory and myth, which is really the story of her life.

"Somewhere with sun," she offers, overwhelmed by the worlds dancing behind her eyelids. They've spent too long in the dark. After Darillium and the artifice of the Library, River misses the feel of real sun on her skin.

...

The Doctor takes her to a planet with five suns, the light so clear that colors fade into uniformity, a rainbow hued dome erected to protect humanoid skin.

They end up running for their lives, of course, and River nicks the gun she neglected to carry from one of the belligerent Sontarans as she knocks him out with a reassuringly solid thump.

The blaster feels natural in her hand, her instincts in a fight more natural than breathing.

It feels like she's finally back in her own skin, flesh and blood and adrenaline, a gun in one hand and the Doctor's in her other, just as it should be.

The Doctor snaps his fingers and they fall through the open TARDIS doors, slamming them shut with breathless laughter.

River turns into him out of forgotten habit, leaning up on her toes to kiss him, as she once did a million times before.

His lips are slightly dry against hers, warm and real, and the electric shock that passes between them reminds her that they haven't done this since...

They haven't done this since Darillium.

And for the life of her, she can't think why not.

The Doctor kisses her as though he's drowning, all desperation and stolen breaths, as though his life is held in her kiss, as though he's afraid she might disappear.

It's only when his hands tenderly, tentatively cup her face that she realizes they're shaking. The Doctor is shaking, trembling in her embrace as though she's the only thing holding him together.

It rocks the precarious balance of her universe, and River takes a startled breath, pulling away until she can search his expression, feeling the Doctor's hands fall helplessly from her face where once he might've held her closer.

He's crying.

"Oh, sweetie," but River doesn't have the words, not when the only solid thing in her new universe is falling apart in front of her. Not when she's the one who broke him.

So she kisses him again, her hand finding his, lacing their fingers together until his stop shaking.

His tears soak her cheeks but his free hand finds its way to bury in her hair, and he clings to her as if she's his only anchor in a raging storm.

The Doctor kisses her with abandon, with a prevailing desperation that makes him greedy, unwilling to let her go. But he doesn't tighten his grip to pull her closer or press her against the door or drag her down the corridors to their bedroom, as he once would have done.

River is the one who turns to lead them down a winding path of corridors that she could never forget in any life.

The Doctor pauses at their bedroom door, reverent fingers tracing the entwined Gallifreyan of their names as he inhales a shaky breath. Her name is broken on his lips. "River."

She squeezes his hand, shushing him with the briefest of kisses. "It's okay, Doctor."

She even thinks she's telling the truth, the door opening for her touch, thinks she knows what to expect.

When she haunted his younger self, their room had been a mausoleum, layered with centuries of dust and disuse.

She'd never been able to bear haunting this version of him, the husband she spent a lifetime of soft smiles and softer morning lie-ins, afraid to find he'd forgotten her all over again.

River's hearts jolt at the sight that greets her because _this_ room - this room is so very lived in that it steals her breath.

The bed is rumpled and unmade, notebooks with the Doctor's precise handwriting spilling off his bedside table, pictures of the two of them balanced precariously atop the pile. Her dressing table still sits as she left it, makeup neatly organized by poison toxicity, and she can see her clothing still entwined with his from the open wardrobe door.

"You still sleep here."

The Doctor runs his thumb over his wedding ring, an unconscious, lonely gesture of comfort. He clears his throat but his voice is still a soft croak, though his eyes have dried. "Where else would I sleep?"

"I haven't been." She hasn't been _sleeping_ , and she certainly hasn't been sleeping here.

"No," he agrees, so soft that it's barely a whisper.

He looks utterly at a loss, her husband, the man who, above all, always wants to help. He went to all the effort to bring her back to life - the details of which he keeps deftly eluding, though she has her theories - and instead he's been tiptoeing around her shadow, afraid to pull her closer lest she pull away.

He thinks she's going to leave - him, _everything_ \- she realizes, with startling clarity. She can hardly blame him - she's not exactly been herself - not even known who that really is anymore.

But whoever she is now, she knows one thing with certainty: River Song and the Doctor are bound together, _always and completely_.

River slides her finger over the top of his ring, stilling him. "I'm here now."

The Doctor looks up at her at last, the thunderclouds clearing from his expression and a tremulous, but decidedly soppy, grin already brightening his face. "You are."

Her husband has always been the optimist; River can only hope she isn't offering false promises. Still, she sways gently closer, addicted to the way her hearts race with something other than terror in his arms. She leans into it and him, letting her voice lower flirtatiously, the way it once used to, in another life. "I am. Here. In our _bed_ room." She takes a breath that she barely has to remind herself of. "Whatever shall we do about that?"

The Doctor doesn't waste another second; as though he'd been waiting for her permission, he draws her closer, until she's pressed against the long length of his body, his hands suddenly everywhere. When he kisses her, all the restraint of before is shattered, leaving a ravenous kind of longing.

River loops her arms around his neck, fingers curling into his hair, and lets go of everything but him.

It's easier to remember to breathe when her pulse is racing with adrenaline and endorphins and her lungs are pushed to their considerable capacity before they part for gasping breaths.

They somehow make their way to the bed, tumbling into it with a kind of playful abandon that River has only ever found with the Doctor.

The Doctor lets her lead; his hands roam her body as though he's memorizing her all over again, but they don't dip under her dress until she lifts it. He helps her pull the fabric over her head and toss it away with practiced ease, his hands brushing her skin in a way that makes it tingle.

He takes a harsh breath once she's bared to him and the way his eyes roam her body is so tender that River thinks he might cry again. Wonders if she will; if she remembers how.

His hands settle politely at her waist, thumbs stroking soothingly across her stomach. Her skin warms under his touch, the heat radiating out from his palms until she feels hot from the inside out, until she has to check and make sure there's no gold dancing under his fingertips.

"What do you want, River?"

There's something desperate in his voice, as though he's asking for every piece of her that's left; not that he's ever asked for anything less.

Only she's not sure what she had left to give him. "Can we just," River feels her smile wobble and hopes it's enough, "pretend?"

The Doctor understands, of course he does; sees all the words she can't find. He's always seen right through her, even when she tried to hide everything.

His hands slide leisurely up her body and River shuts her eyes because, even if she's forgotten, the Doctor knows her body like one of his own. Little by little, he brings her back into herself with gentle, knowing caresses until she's hot and cold and melting all over.

When the heat starts to lick across her skin like flames, the Doctor's hands slip regretfully from her breasts. River's eyes flutter open, automatically seeking out his.

He carefully brings his hand to his own collar, eyes never leaving hers as he slowly, _slowly_ undoes the buttons to his shirt, pausing after each as though he's expecting her to stop him.

River shivers, from cold or anticipation or the sudden rush of _feeling_ , she can't tell, and the Doctor immediately wraps her in his steady arms, drawing her into his warmth.

He's still half-dressed but her skin touches his and River feels the reverberation right down to her bones, like coming home and a baptism of fire all at once.

"Doctor."

He kisses his name off her lips, infinitely tender, and River chases the sugar she can taste on his tongue.

Seeking more of the electricity between them, River shoves at his clothing and, with a frayed moan, the Doctor helps her.

It seems inevitable and somehow surprising when they're both naked, curled together on their sides in their bed. The Doctor has somehow drawn the covers over them, chasing away the chill River thinks she felt earlier, and she's wrapped up in them and him: the Doctor; her husband.

His fingers trace nonsense patterns at her hip, his other hand curled protectively in her hair as she rests her head over his arm.

When the curl of heat spidering out from his fingertips starts to become an overpowering _need_ , River catches his hand in hers, the Doctor lacing their fingers together and squeezing her hand as she slides them lower. Her hand falls away as his slips between her thighs, bringing her body to life with a jolt of electricity that leaves her gasping and whimpering under his capable fingertips.

She finds herself clinging to him, desperate, her body pressed up against his and her nails leaving marks in his skin.

Once upon a time, it would've embarrassed her, how easily he can make her fall apart in his arms.

"It's all right. River. Sweetheart." He swears his devotion in a ragged whisper against her temple. "Let go. I've got you."

And he does. He catches her, just as always. Just as he's been catching her.

He holds her patiently through the rush of bliss that engulfs her, holds her until her limbs still and her breath evens, until her mind can reboot into some shaky semblance of coherence.

But he's watching her with worried eyes. "All right?"

River kisses him in lieu of an answer because she doesn't know how she feels but she does know that this is the most she's _felt_ since she awoke in this body.

After the dull edge of death and computer code, after the numbness of resurrection, she's greedy for these fleeting moments of connection.

She's missed this.

She's missed them. Missed _him_.

River reaches for him in a cloud of lust that she doesn't want to clear, still jumping blindly just for the rush of flying before she falls.

The Doctor responds with vigor but he lets her lead, and he doesn't take things further until she slides her leg over his hip, a needy, wordless keen tripping over her lips, muffled against his neck.

When he finally presses inside her, gradually and with infinite care, River's breath catches, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

The Doctor stops immediately, his frame tense with the effort of holding still but alarm clearly writ across his face. "River? Are you - did I hurt you?" He is already withdrawing, horrified.

Clutching him closer, River shakes her head, the words all jumbled up with the raw emotions she's forgotten how to feel. "No. Just - don't stop."

He wipes her tears away with the pad of his thumb, hand lingering to cradle her face. He kisses her again, seeking her assurance, somehow even softer than before as he starts to move again.

There's an infinity of moments before she's finally full with him, her body molding to fit him until they're as bespoke in this as in everything else.

The Doctor pauses there, whispering sweet nothings between kisses pressed against her skin and lips and hair.

It's River who moves first because she _needs_ to move, to feel him moving. It's startling, after months of sleepwalking through this new existence, to _want_ with such ferocity.

She rocks her hips against his, eliciting twin moans at the rush of sensation, and then the Doctor is moving with her, against her, one hand buried in her hair and the other wrapped securely around her, holding her closer still.

Time falls away without the accompanying sense of loss. River's senses are filled with the way their bodies still move together in perfect sync, with the reassurances and promises and benedictions spilling across the Doctor's lips, with the scent and sound and feel of him, once memorized and long since faded like ancient papers scattered to the winds.

Their movements linger, measured and unhurried, reminiscent of a lifetime of late morning lie-ins, and yet River feels her skin heat and throb, feels the raw edge of their desperation in the way hands clutch too tightly and yet still shake.

She remembers that too, those desperate couplings when they'd been apart far too long or knew they soon would be, when their flirting couldn't mask the way they clung together.

She wonders how long it's been since Darillium for the Doctor; wonders if it's been long enough that his skin aches and burns the way hers does.

It's exhilarating and agonizing and _wonderful_ and a bit too much all at once, and River finds herself falling over the precipice without even realizing she'd been at the edge.

The Doctor follows behind her, his body stilling against hers, chest still heaving and arms still securely wrapped around her.

Curled against the Doctor, sweaty skin sticking to his and her breath coming fast and reckless, River listens to the rapid beat of the Doctor's hearts singing in time with the drumming of her own pulse and exhales a shaky laugh.

The Doctor lifts his head lazily, his arms tightening around her, as though she might run away. "What?" He quirks an impressive brow and tries to hide the smile tugging at his lips. "Should I be offended, dear?"

It's the first time she's laughed since her resurrection.

"Nothing," River soothes his concerns with a kiss that he quickly deepens, stealing her breath and her laughter as though he's been starved for both.

It's nothing. Just, with her pulse thundering in her ears and her lungs tight and demanding, for the first time River doesn't have to think - she just feels.

She feels alive.


End file.
